[AT] O T calf in car

[Indiana Robinson]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 11:40 AM, Ralph Goff <alfg at sasktel.net> wrote:

>
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3012885/Polish-traffic-cops-stunned-calf-farmer-s-Fiat-Punto.html
>
> Nothing strange about it. I had a newborn calf I hauled back to the yard
> in the back of my Chevy Blazer earlier this week.
> Dad used to remove the rear seat from the 39 Ford sedan so he could put
> a calf in there if one needed to be carried home
> from the field to the barn.
>
> Ralph in Sask.
> ______________________________



My father had bought a new Willys sedan before WW-II and had put a lot of
miles on it delivering newspapers but during the war it gave him some
problems (He was no longer doing newspapers). You absolutely could not buy
Willys parts during the war. It used the same 4 cylinder engine as the
Jeep. He parked it and bought a Model A Ford sedan because you could find
parts everywhere or buy a junk one for parts. I remember him taking out the
back seat and hauling a goat home in it. I remembered it because it looked
like the goat was sitting back on the seat relaxing as he drove in. I must
have been about 5 or 6.
After the war was over he bought a new army surplus Jeep engine totally
complete right down to the air cleaner and all of the other giblets and put
it in the Willys sedan. He  then drove it until about 1952.
We had to keep a few goats around for some time because my sister couldn't
drink cows milk and of course in those days there were not the kind of
options we have now.

Rambling now...
Model A Fords became a very popular vehicle here during the years of the
war (1941-1945) especially about 1943 until about 1947. Stuff didn't
automatically become available right after the war ended. It took a couple
of years to retool. Those A's were pretty reliable and cheap.
We used a Model A Ford small truck from about 1947 until about 1953. In
1951 we moved from my grandmother's farm to this one and that little truck
either hauled or towed almost everything. My father drove the 9N and the
TO-20 Ferguson the 15-16 miles here, each with an implement behind them. He
didn't want to drive the McCormick 10-20 or pay to have it hauled. The guy
that bought my grandmother's farm owned an Indy Chevy dealership and kind
of wanted that 10-20 which had new paint and decals so my father traded it
to him for a fairly nice Chrysler 4 door. That Willys sedan had a good
trailer hitch on it as did the little A truck. We had a good sized utility
trailer and the 2 wagons were heavily loaded for their trip. I recall the
back seat of the car being piled to the ceiling on most trips.
I shudder to think how many trips it took. They had a "clean-up" auction
before the move but there was still a lot of stuff to move. We had more
farm equipment than most farms our size. Things were really starting to
change on farms about then.
Until about then an awful lot of farmers didn't own a full set of
implements, mostly just the bigger guys. Smaller farmers swapped work back
and forth. For many years in the 1940's my father and a good neighbor
shared an ear corn elevator they had built together. I recall him mowing
hay for another neighbor who didn't own a mower. We put up chopped dry hay
but the neighbor wanted bales so yet another neighbor did the baling for
him. I'm pretty sure he did own the rake they used.
Different times...

-- 

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com